WTW Acquires Redefind to Fill the Crypto Insurance Gap

WTW (Willis Towers Watson), the NASDAQ-listed global advisory and insurance broker, acquired Redefind on June 2 to build what the company describes as the first non-custodial crypto insurance product inside a regulated, global distribution network. The acquisition arrives as full-year 2025 data from PeckShield, a blockchain security firm, put total crypto theft above $4 billion for the year, and as a GlobalData consumer survey found insurance penetration among cryptocurrency holders globally at just 11 percent.

Redefind launched in July 2025 with UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulation and Lloyd’s of London backing from syndicates rated A+ by AM Best. Its coverage pays the professional fees required to pursue stolen digital assets: forensic investigation costs, asset tracing, and legal recovery expenses, without attempting to insure the fluctuating market value of the holdings themselves. WTW will roll the service out first in the UK, with geographic and product expansion to follow through its Affinity practice, which serves clients across 140 countries and markets.

How Cryptographic Proof Changes the Coverage Model

Standard insurance relies on documentation and self-reporting to verify what a policyholder owns. That model breaks under digital assets, where a paper declaration can’t confirm that the Bitcoin described in an application is present in the wallet claimed, hasn’t already been transferred, and isn’t pledged elsewhere. Underwriters price that verification risk into already-thin margins, or they pass entirely.

Redefind’s enterprise web application closes the gap using blockchain-native verification. The platform’s cryptographic proof-of-ownership system confirms, on-chain, that a policyholder holds what they claim to hold, across hardware wallets, exchange accounts, and multi-signature setups, without requiring asset owners to move funds or change custody arrangements.

Most existing crypto insurance products tie coverage to a specific custodian. Store assets with that exchange or provider, and you’re covered; spread holdings across a hardware wallet, a second exchange, and a DeFi protocol as a security measure, and the coverage generally doesn’t follow. Redefind’s cross-custody design covers assets wherever they sit. For self-custody holders, the historic coverage position was essentially zero: the industry shorthand “not your keys, not your coins” described a theft-risk reality with no insurance transfer mechanism behind it.

When a theft is reported, the platform assigns blockchain investigators to locate stolen assets, then engages legal experts to establish a recovery strategy. Recovered assets go to the policyholder in full. Pennington’s LLP, the specialist crypto legal firm that helped structure the coverage from its 2022 inception, described the finished product as the world’s first regulated crypto asset theft insurance. The service cleared FCA authorization and secured Lloyd’s backing before its commercial launch.

Co-founder and CEO Richard Daws and co-founder Connor Edward joined Willis, WTW’s broking arm, upon completion of the deal. WTW’s June 2 press release on the Redefind deal confirmed that financial terms were not disclosed.

Four Billion Dollars Without a Policy

The protection gap Redefind addresses ran to record scale in 2025. PeckShield’s annual security report put total crypto-related losses at $4.04 billion, up 34.2 percent from $3.01 billion in 2024 and roughly 55 percent above 2023. Chainalysis’s full-year 2025 crypto theft analysis tracked a figure above $3.4 billion using a different methodology, with divergences reflecting varying scope and attribution standards between firms.

• $4.04 billion in crypto stolen in 2025, up 34% year-over-year (PeckShield)
• $1.5 billion taken in a single Bybit exchange breach in February, attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, and the largest individual crypto theft on record
• 158,000 personal wallet compromises in 2025, affecting 80,000 unique victims (Chainalysis)
• $334.9 million recovered or frozen across all 2025 incidents, down from $488.5 million the prior year (PeckShield)

North Korean state hackers accounted for at least $2.02 billion of the year’s service-level losses per Chainalysis estimates, a 51 percent increase on 2024 and the regime’s most productive theft year on record. Those funds move fast through mixers, cross-chain bridges, and specialist laundering networks, making recovery without forensic support nearly impossible.

The recovery figure shapes the product case. When digital assets are stolen, an affected party faces blockchain forensic fees, civil litigation across jurisdictions, and engagement with law enforcement spanning multiple countries. Those professional costs accumulate regardless of whether assets come back. No standard insurance product covers them.

Grand View Research put the global crypto insurance market at $9.49 billion in 2025, projecting growth to $192.72 billion by 2033 at a 45.8 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), per its 2026 crypto insurance market report. Research estimates for 2025 vary considerably across providers, with Insurance Business Magazine noting a range from under $2 billion to nearly $10 billion for the same year, reflecting how little standardized market data currently exists in the segment.

The Valuation Problem Underwriters Couldn’t Price

Pricing the Unsteady Asset

That 11 percent insurance penetration figure isn’t a discovery friction problem. The shortage has been on the supply side, driven by underwriting fundamentals that mostly haven’t changed.

Traditional insurance prices risk against historical claims data and reasonably stable asset values. A crypto position worth $65,000 at policy inception can be worth $52,000 three days later. Setting a premium for an asset class where value can move 20 percent in a week requires actuarial tools the industry didn’t have for digital assets until recently, and most carriers decided the work wasn’t worth the revenue.

The supply-side reluctance was well documented. AM Best’s analysis of traditional carrier behavior found the following:

A limited number of traditional carriers currently write crypto coverage, often through surplus lines or specialty markets. This reluctance stems from a number of factors, including cybersecurity and theft risk, because crypto assets are vulnerable to hacking, and private keys are vulnerable to theft and fraud.

Edin Imsirovic, director of market research at AM Best, wrote that in analysis published by Risk and Insurance on the crypto coverage gap. AM Best’s consumer survey found that 42 percent of uninsured crypto holders would purchase coverage if it were available, with another 26 percent open to it. The demand was there for years. The product capacity wasn’t.

The Custody Gap

The coverage that did exist solved the supply-side problem for a narrow group. By tying policies to specific custodians, insurers could negotiate bilateral security standards, audit requirements, and coverage limits in a controlled relationship. That worked for institutional-scale exchanges and custody providers. It produced almost nothing for retail holders using hardware wallets, individuals spreading assets across platforms as a security measure, or any setup that didn’t route through a single underwritten custodian.

Because Redefind’s product covers professional recovery fees rather than the market value of stolen assets, the actuarial inputs are bounded. Legal fees, investigation costs, and recovery proceedings have cost histories underwriters can model. The volatile mark-to-market problem disappears when the insured item is a fee structure rather than a fluctuating asset price. Those more predictable costs also make the premium structure accessible to retail and smaller institutional buyers who couldn’t absorb premiums sized against crypto market caps.

Marsh and Aon Were Already at the Table

WTW’s acquisition didn’t open a vacant market. All three of the global brokerage majors have been building digital asset risk capabilities, with competitive pressure accelerating through 2025 and into 2026.

Against Marsh McLennan’s estimated 22 percent global brokerage market share and Aon’s roughly 20 percent, WTW holds between 5 and 7 percent, per market analysis from EveryTicker cited in Insurance Business Magazine’s May 2026 coverage. Volume competition is a losing fight from that position, which is why the Redefind acquisition follows specialty-technology logic. The cryptographic proof-of-ownership infrastructure is something WTW couldn’t have replicated quickly from scratch, and keeping Daws and Edward inside Willis after the deal closed is the clearest indication of that judgment.

Specialist providers have been building capacity on their own timeline. Evertas nearly tripled its crypto insurance coverage limits in 2026. Coincover, another specialist, completed a SOC 2 Type II security audit in early 2025. The space was maturing while the brokerage giants assessed entry points, and WTW’s decision to acquire a ready-made, FCA-authorized platform is the decision that logic produces at this stage of the market.

The 140-Country Distribution Machine

The Affinity Advantage

The acquisition’s consequential stakes sit in what happens after the UK launch. WTW’s Affinity practice manages distribution relationships across 140 countries and markets. A corporate treasury holding Bitcoin, a fund manager with digital asset exposure, an exchange operator in an emerging market: all three conversations already exist inside WTW’s client base. Embedding Redefind’s product into standard client risk reviews gives the broker something to offer each of them.

Anthony Borgman, head of GB Affinity at Willis, framed the deal in terms of what the Affinity infrastructure enables: the platform will “continue to evolve with support from WTW’s Affinity practice and for wider distribution.” Alastair Swift, head of global specialties at Willis, connected the acquisition to where institutional demand is now heading: “As digital assets continue to move further into the mainstream, demand for credible regulated protection solutions is increasing.”

The UK-first sequence is structural. Redefind’s FCA authorization and Lloyd’s backing provide a regulatory and institutional foundation that would take years to build from scratch elsewhere. The US regulatory picture for crypto remains contested; most European markets outside the UK require independent compliance architecture. The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), the unified supervisory framework for crypto-asset service providers across EU member states, offers a ready compliance structure for expansion into European markets once UK operations are established.

The Integration Question

WTW employs roughly 48,900 people globally. Redefind went from concept to commercial launch in approximately four years, built by its founders with specialist legal and regulatory partners. Folding a novel insurance product into existing brokerage workflows at that scale, while keeping the blockchain forensics knowledge and legal recovery network the founders carry intact, is the operational test this deal creates.

WTW’s recent acquisition pattern suggests it understands the distinction between buying a capability and bolting on a product. The $1.05 billion purchase of US tech-native broker Newfront in early 2026, part of the firm’s “Grow, Simplify, Transform” strategic agenda, followed the same template: acquire what the market built rather than build it from inside, and retain the people who built it. Redefind follows that logic at a smaller entry price and an earlier market stage.

The UK launch has WTW’s 140-country client roster waiting behind it.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or insurance advice. Digital assets and crypto insurance products involve significant risk. All figures cited reflect data available at publication date. Readers should consult a qualified financial or insurance professional before making any decisions. WTW (NASDAQ: WTW) is a publicly traded company; nothing in this article constitutes a recommendation to buy or sell its securities.